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Anne Wood/"Interview" transcript
The following text is a transcript of an "interview" that Anne Wood gave out when Boohbah debuted in the United States. An audio recording of this interview can be found on every [[Paramount Home Media Distribution#Videos and DVDs|American Boohbah DVD]] (where it is played over clips from the show and clips of children watching it), and it could also be found on the American website's "parent and teachers" homepage (set to animated clips of the Boohbahs and slideshows of images of the real people segments). For all intents and purposes, the clips and the sound effects of each clip played over both audio versions of the interview are not listed or included in this transcript. Although the educational values Wood discusses can be used to describe the show in general, she also discusses the educational values of the "Look What I Can Do!" segments, which were not part of the original British broadcasts in the first place. I think, in ''Boohbah, the main thing is that you have engaged children totally with movement right from the beginning. Everyone knows that movement is good for children. What we're trying to do is engage the children in recognition, recognition of what the movement is, imitation - let's imitate what they do - and then what you might call consolidation - make them really happy - because what we want to do is make children feel happy inside. The sound effects on the Boohbah movements are all about releasing anxiety. So if you get daft soundtracks like we've got, then you don't feel anxious about having a go. You ''can have a go - you can be like the Boohbahs, 'cause they are absolutely silly!'' The Storypeople have been designed to be two-dimensional characters. They're like pieces in a game to be played with. The stories are what you might call "puzzles". You're always trying in a script for young children, or a story for young children, to encourage curiosity, first of all. So you make them curious - what's coming - we don't tell them what it is until after we've left them long enough for them to work it out for themselves. We do use patterns very deliberately in ''Boohbah. Patterns are very important - the recognition of patterns. So knowing this, we consciously - in Boohbah - made the patterns even more elaborate.'' The activities that the children do in the "Look What I Can Do!" section are often very simple, and to the adult eye this might seem that we are not teaching the children anything, but in fact what we're doing is encouraging the joy of discovery. I think it's really important that we value every individual child for what they can do, and that's what the "Look What I Can Do!" section is about. It's a real shame, I think, when we try to make all children measure up to one perfect model. There is no perfect model. We're each our own perfect being in a sense, and children of this age know that and they really enjoy what they have to offer. In the opening titles, we go - or we did travel - to 15 different countries, so that the children watching over the weeks will see different countries every day. It's a good thing for children to feel that there are others like themselves not just in the next street, but in other parts of the world as well. And it makes us aware of our similarities rather than our differences, which is always a good thing. And the thing that joins us together most of all, at the risk of sounding soppy, is laughter. And it is the best thing. Makes you feel better whatever you do. Listen to the interview